Week 3_ Christine Chau_A04

This weeks reading were very interesting because I know very little about Hmong, or where they come from. Growing up in school there was not a single word of "Hmong" in our history textbooks. Of course the history courses taught back in middle and high school is what they call "white history". Historic events that are usually manipulated in ways where we can understand their idea of what history is. It's sad to think there are many other essential historic events we should know about, ones I learn from randomly online, but since there are a group of people out there writing these books, purposely not putting them in to "erase history" by never teaching it.

It's crazy to believe that only a faction of people actually know what being Hmong really means. Reading Mouavangsou's Hmong Does Not Mean Free: The Miseducation of Hmong Americans informed me a little more about Hmong, and what it means to identify with it. When Mouavangsou mentioned how Hmong are sometimes called Meo or Miao by other people, but a Hmong person never calls another Hmong Meo or Miao, it is interesting because these are the little facts/norms we don't know about at all, we would think they are used socially, but in reality they can display a negative stigma. Then when she mentioned how Hmong were first known as "members of a primitive, mostly illiterate tribal group[...]" shocked me because of the "mostly illiterate tribal group". When she broke down on why Hmong does not have a proper language or literacy system, it was easy to understand. They have been swept under the rug by people who want them to assimilate to other cultures. Hmong are one of the groups that helps me debunk the "model minority" myth because there is so much more than the "success" achieved by Asians (which are usually dominated by a specific group, not all Asians). I chose to put a Hmong flag since I was curious to see how it looks like, which I think is pretty interesting. Some question I have been thinking of the past week regarding our readings and things we have been learning from class is: We all have been more aware of these issues and we're really educating ourselves of history and these terms in order to better use them, but how do we actually make a difference on getting rid of the "model minority" myth, or is our goal not to get rid of this myth, but more of to change the meaning of it?

Photo: (n.d.). Retrieved from https://fotw.info/flags/la-hmong.html

Moua, M.(N/A). Navigating Graduate Education as a First-Generation, Hmong American Woman: An Autoethnography. Hmong Studies Journal, vol19(1): 1-25.